A legal battle has broken out in Oakland, California, over whether construction companies should be forced to pay for public art in building projects. An alliance of firms in Oakland is suing the city over laws that came into effect in February forcing them to spend between 0.5% and 1% of any project’s budget on public art. There are more than 200 such public art ordinances across the United States and construction bosses will be closely monitoring the outcome of the lawsuit. Artists in Oakland, meanwhile, are fearful that a victory for the firms will be a defeat for culture...

Former SC Democratic party chair Dick Harpootlian told MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki Sunday Vice President Joe Biden’s consideration of a presidential run actually gives Democrats the best chance of retaining the White House in 2016. Harpootlian said Hillary Clinton’s track record will cause her and the Democrats to “die a death of a thousand cuts,” yet Biden is “an inspirational figure” that voters can rally around. HARPOOTLIAN: I think Hillary comes into the race, as she did in ’08 with all kinds of baggage… There’s going to be distractions, we saw just this week with the Wall Street Journal about payments...

"Sen. Ted Cruz, (R-Texas), discusses the consequences of to the Iran nuclear deal, the Planned Parenthood controversy, and whether Trump is going too far on ... " Cavuto: do you think Trump is going too far? Cruz makes good comments back to a pressing Neil Cavuto. And Cruz comments about Nancy Pelosi over Planned Parenthood. An 8 minute video.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she believes Democrats will be able to uphold President Obama's veto if Republicans vote down his nuclear deal with Iran in September and she called the agreement "a diplomatic masterpiece." Pelosi, D-Calif., said Democrats will rally behind the agreement even after the long August recess, when outside groups plan a media blitz aimed at sinking public support. "More and more [Democrats] have conferred to me they will be there to sustain the veto," Pelosi told reporters on Thursday. Congress has begun a 60-day review of the deal, which would lift sanctions against Iran in...

RUSH: Craig in Scarsdale, New York. Great to have you on the program. Hello, sir. CALLER: Thank you very much, Rush. I can't believe all these reporters out there who are just dumping on Trump. It's unbelievable. They gotta go back 30 years to find something that can actually stick to this guy. RUSH: No, no. They have to go back 30 years to make up something. CALLER: I'm sorry? RUSH: They had to go back 30 years to make up something. CALLER: To make up something. And not just that. Why don't we go back 30 years and look...

Don't get into a pissing match with walls in San Francisco. The city's Public Works agency is testing a pee-repellant paint on walls in areas that have been saturated with urine. Anyone urinating on the specially treated walls will get the spray splashed back onto them. [Snip] "The urine will bounce back on the guys pants and shoes. The idea is they will think twice next time about urinating in public," said Rachel Gordon, a Public Works Department spokeswoman. She said the super-hard coating made the "bounce back" effect much stronger than when peeing on a regular wall.

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi argued on Thursday that Republican attempts to defund Planned Parenthood over videos that discuss the alleged sales of fetal tissue from abortions is a phony controversy. The secretly filmed videos, which show Planned Parenthood official Dr. Deborah Nucatola discussing how the health care group uses fetal tissues after abortions, has riled up congressional Republicans who are now pushing forward on legislation to strip the group of federal funding. Pelosi said it’s just another attempt by GOP lawmakers to target Planned Parenthood over ideological objections. “They’ve been out to get Planned Parenthood for as long as I...

House Democratic leaders are slamming GOP legislation aimed at discouraging sanctuary cities, characterizing the proposal as "The Donald Trump Act" in a bid to embarrass the Republicans bringing the measure to the floor this week. The proposal, which would withhold federal law enforcement funds for state or local governments that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration agents, comes in response to this month's fatal shooting of Kathryn Steinle along the San Francisco waterfront, allegedly by an illegal immigrant with a long criminal history. The House vote on the Republicans' sanctuary city bill is scheduled for Thursday, and it is expected...

PHOENIX—Bernie Sanders is unaccustomed to being heckled by protesters. The self-identified democratic socialist was caught off guard here Saturday when African-American and Latino activists jeered him at Netroots Nation. Sanders’ inability to control the audience – he tried to shut them up and then he tried to yell over them – underscores his broader struggle to expand his appeal and highlights why his summer surge is unlikely to last. The huge crowds Sanders draws are overwhelmingly white, and polling consistently shows that virtually all of his support comes from whites. After Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two contests on...

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Bernie Sanders told veterans in Iowa Friday that unlike some other politicians, he doesn't pay lip service to their concerns. "It is very easy to raise the flag at a troop deployment, it is very easy for a politician to give a moving speech on Veterans Day," Sanders said. "But it is very hard to go down that long road with the men and women who served and make sure that they continue to get all the benefits, all the healthcare, that they are entitled to for the rest of their lives." The Vermont senator told...

Looks like Martin O'Malley caused an interesting meltdown at Netroots Nation by saying, "All lives matter." My fellow White Progressives, please understand "all lives matter" is received as erasure not inclusion to #BlackLivesMatter. #NN15TownHall If a #BlackLivesMatter usage manual is written, who better to write the instruction book than the white daughter of a rich, white member of Congress?

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the four American hostages being held in Iran should not have been released as a pre-condition to the Iran nuclear deal, but she added that because “we have a nuclear agreement, that a much brighter light is being shone on the prisoners of conscience in Iran.” At a Capitol Hill press conference, CNSNews.com asked Rep. Pelosi, “Do you think the four American hostages being held in Iran should have been released as a pre-condition to any deal made about Iran’s nuclear program?” Pelosi answered, “No, no, it would have been good but it’s...

With Democratic Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) and Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Clybrun called on Congress to expand Brady background checks and vote on the bill Thompson and Peter King (R-N.Y.) introduced earlier this year. The Public Safety and Second Amendment Rights Protection Act would require background checks for all gun sales to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and people who are mentally ill.

House Speaker Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) this past week again showed he will punish conservative House members for not supporting deals he strikes with President Obama and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). This does not bode well for the package of immigration bills to be debated on the House floor sometime after the July Fourth recess. House Republicans have been writing and “marking up” more than a dozen immigration bills over the past year, and Republican leaders have been promising a “package of little bills” as an alternative to the “comprehensive” bills favored by the amnesty lobby.

Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the funding arm of the political network backed by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, wants a lot more hard information from the crowded field of presidential contenders before deciding what to do with its considerable resources. The group is pressing every 2016 candidate to detail on the record their plans for economic growth, deficit reduction, entitlement reform, criminal justice and even foreign policy. The tax-exempt entity, a key node in a constellation of conservative entities that aims to spend $889 million before the next White House election, distributed a detailed survey Thursday to...

<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tensions are building inside and outside the white marble facade of the U.S. Supreme Court building as the nine justices prepare to issue major rulings on gay marriage and President Barack Obama's healthcare law by the end of the month.</p>

There’s nothing like a big-money fundraiser for House Democrats to bring President Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi closer together. Mr. Obama and Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, made a show of mending fences Friday night at a fundraiser at the home of billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer overlooking the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco. Friday was their first meeting since Mrs. Pelosi turned against the president last week by leading the opposition that temporarily derailed crucial trade legislation Mr. Obama is seeking. Despite those tensions, Mr. Obama told more than 50 wealthy Democratic donors, who paid up to...

Tuesday at the White House press briefing, press secretary Josh Earnest revealed that President Barack Obama has not talked to House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi since last week when she handed him a resounding defeat on his Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal by not supporting a key measure for financial aid to displaced workers. However Earnest said the President has had spoken “on a couple occasions yesterday” with Republican Speaker of the House Rep. John Boehner

The Republican field is crowded, which implies that primary voters have little information about where some of the candidates stand. That is particularly the case this season, with a few relatively unknown contenders who lack legislative experience or a long history of campaign contributions that would allow researchers to precisely identify where they stand on the liberal-to-conservative political dimension.However, one characteristic all candidates share is that they have active and popular Twitter accounts. And as I showed in an article published earlier this year in the journal Political Analysis — now freely available online as an Editors’ Choice article —...

The FBI asked for the public’s help Monday in identifying people who have severed underground fiber-optic cables throughout the Bay Area. Over the past year, vandals have used tools to intentionally cut the cables in Berkeley, Fremont, Alamo, Walnut Creek and San Jose in 10 separate incidents, most of which happened in the middle of the night, said FBI Special Agent Greg Wuthrich. The cost of the damage was not discosed. The FBI is coordinating the investigation, which involves several local law enforcement agencies, Wuthrich said. The cases are not related to a mysterious rifle attack on a Pacific Gas...

Hillary Clinton's Saturday campaign reboot isn't just her first public rally. Coming a day after President Obama suffered an embarrassing legislative defeat, it is a changing of the guard for the Democratic Party. Make no mistake: while House Republicans also voted overwhelmingly against the president on a key trade bill Friday, it was his fellow Democrats who handed him the most stinging rebuke. Just 40 Democrats out of 188 voted with Obama. Nearly 80 percent of House Democrats, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, went against him. A mere two of the 10 Democrats representing Obama's home state of Illinois in...

So who’s waiting in the wings with a humongous bankroll and a proven history of enforcing the type of big-government policies the Democrat faithful love? Click to the next page to find out. …when that time finally comes, and the inevitable euthanasia of Hillary Clinton’s political ambitions finally materializes, it won’t be Sanders who benefits. Nor will the other Lilliputian Democrat hopefuls, like Jim Webb, Lincoln Chaffee or Martin O’Malley. It’s going to be Mike Bloomberg.

In a public rebuke to President Barack Obama, top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi on Friday swung against legislation aimed at making it easier for the president and his successor to negotiate free trade deals. The California Democrat said lawmakers should “slow this down” in hopes of getting stronger protections for U.S. workers and the environment in potential trade pacts, including one with Pacific nations. Pelosi made her position known just prior to separate House votes to reject aid to displaced workers and to give Obama the “fast track” trade negotiating authority he is seeking. “We need to slow this ‘fast...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a meandering but dramatic floor speech on Friday said she will vote "no" on a measure providing assistance to workers displaced by trade. Pelosi's opposition to the Trade Adjustment Assistance program casts doubt on whether the measure will pass.

FULL TITLE: PAUL RYAN UNCHAINED: LASHES OUT AT BREITBART, DRUDGE, ‘DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ ON THE INTERNET’ You know you’re losing when you’re reduced to attacking the Internet. House Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan is now attacking the Web, proving he shouldn’t be trusted by Republican members of Congress to tell the truth about controversial trade legislation. In an appearance Thursday on Fox and Friends, Ryan criticized Breitbart News and other conservative media including the highly influential Drudge Report, which have revealed the immigration and climate change provisions within President Obama’s trade agenda. “Let’s talk about...

The detachment from reality of that great military strategist, former House Speaker and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, has been well documented, from her defense of ObamaCare and the millions of jobs it would create instantly and that you had to pass to find out what’s in it, to her current fable -- that the rise of the barbaric Islamic State and its victory over Iraqi forces we trained is, as the Democratic mantra now goes, the fault of President George W. Bush in general and Gen. David Petraeus in particular: Reporter: “General Petraeus said last night that we are...

Writing online, author Elisa Gabbert answered one of her reader's questions about whether he should stop writing because of his "privilege" of being white and male. An anonymous reader asked Gabbert: "I am a white, male poet—a white, male poet who is aware of his privilege and sensitive to inequalities facing women, POC, and LGBTQ individuals in and out of the writing community—but despite this awareness and sensitivity, I am still white and still male. Sometimes I feel like the time to write from my experience has passed, that the need for poems from a white, male perspective just isn’t...

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 2, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, says that same-sex “marriage” is perfectly "consistent" with Catholic Christianity. Pelosi brought her grandchildren to see her receive an award from the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, to show the young, impressionable children that "marriage equality is important." In an interview with Thomas Roberts on MSNBC, Pelosi said she took the children to the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund gala because "it's really important to see what the practice of our faith is." Pelosi, who described herself as a faithful Christian and “mainstream Catholic,” said her...

Jesus and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) 7% seem to have different ideas of what it means to be a good Catholic. On Friday evening, Pelosi lashed out at Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) 81% for being a “polarizing” figure and not a good “mainstream” Catholic like her. When Rubio expressed his (very Catholic) opposition to same-sex marriage, Pelosi responded by pulling out her purported superior Catholic credentials, crowing that she had grown up in a “mainstream” Catholic family. She expressed her belief that Rubio’s opposition to same-sex marriage is “polarizing,” which threatens “mainstream Christian thinking.” Pelosi’s reasoning presents two enormous problems,...

Cut through the niceties couching the rhetoric of Democrat House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) 7% on Friday’s MSNBC Live, and it’s hard to interpret otherwise than Pelosi saying Republican Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) 81% and any other Catholics who might not endorse gay marriage are hateful homophobes out of step with so called “mainstream” Catholics like herself. Naturally, it’s of no surprise that an MSNBC host conveniently set her up for the opportunity to denounce Rubio, as well as define Catholicism for everyone. I thoroughly disagree (with Rubio’s opposition to gay marriage), being raised in a Catholic family,...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Friday that Bill and Hillary Clinton will need to answer for the donations taken in by the Clinton Foundation. Pelosi told MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts that there’s “no question” the donation scandal “raises questions” that the former secretary of state will need to answer for. She made the remarks after Roberts asked her to respond to a New York Times story showing that former President Clinton appeared at a charity event, but only after they gave a $500,000 donation to the foundation.

That'll show 'em. MSNBC has a new show! It’s hosted by former Pennsylvania Representative Patrick Murphy (D-of course). It’s called “Taking the Hill” and this weekend it featured an appearance by everyone’s favorite former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Murphy asked Pelosi about Obama’s failing battle against ISIS, but Pelosi wasn’t interested in admitting that things aren’t going so well. Instead, she decided to highlight one of the areas where we are, apparently, making some truly “impressive advances” against our barbaric opponents. Are we bombing them back into the stone age? Not really. Are we killing them at a...

All 20 Republican lawmakers who voted against an amendment that prevents illegals from enlisting in the U.S. military refused to answer questions from Breitbart News regarding the expedited citizenship most illegals would have been eligible for once they joined the armed forces. They also each refused to answer whether they agree with House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) calling their Republican colleagues who voted for the amendment “xenophobic” and “un-American.” That means that for now, the 20 Republicans who defected and joined Democrats in opposing the amendment are allowing Pelosi’s comments to remain unchallenged. ... There is a core...

Nancy Pelosi is now predicting that Republicans will “rue the day” that the Supreme Court guts Obamacare subsidies for millions in three dozen states. “They’re going to then go out and say we’re going to take subsidies away from people who have health care? No, I don’t think so,” says Pelosi. “It would be really bad news for them.” Meanwhile, if anything, Republicans may be moving away from their previously-stated vow to participate in providing a contingency fix to temporarily keep those millions covered. The Hill reports that GOP Rep. Tom Price, the chairman of the House budget committee and...

One hundred and fifty members of Congress – all Democrats and, among them, most of the small group of bitterly anti-Israel lawmakers – signed a letter supporting President Obama’s diplomatic efforts vis-ŕ-vis the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Authored by Reps. Jan Schakowsky (Illinois), Lloyd Doggett (Texas), and David Price (North Carolina), the letter exemplifies the hyper-partisanship that has driven the left wing of the Democrat party on this issue even as that wing has cried “partisan extremism” at the responses from Republicans. As if trying to prove Churchill right, this Iran Surrender Caucus, whenever presented with a choice between dishonor...

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — The government of Colombia on Thursday night rejected a major tool in the American-backed antidrug campaign — ordering a halt to the aerial spraying of the country’s vast illegal plantings of coca, the crop used to make cocaine, citing concerns that the spray causes cancer. The decision ends a program that has continued for more than two decades, raising questions about the viability of long-accepted strategies in the war on drugs in the region. Colombia is one of the closest allies of the United States in Latin America and its most stalwart partner on antidrug policy, but...

The pope’s closest adviser on Tuesday slammed climate-change skeptics, blaming capitalist motivations from “movements in the United States” for opposing the Catholic Church leader’s upcoming environmental letter. “The ideology surrounding environmental issues is too tied to a capitalism that doesn’t want to stop ruining the environment because they don’t want to give up their profits,” said Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga at a news conference in Rome marking the start of Caritas Internationalis, an annual meeting of Catholic charitable groups, according to The Boston Globe. Pope Francis is expected to issue his encyclical letter on the environment this year, and Rodríguez...

Hillary Clinton, just three weeks after blasting "unaccountable money" and calling for a campaign finance overhaul, reportedly met with potential donors to a super PAC backing her White House campaign Wednesday -- the first such face-to-face meetings held by a Democratic presidential candidate. The Wall Street Journal reported that Clinton met with a small group of potential donors to Priorities USA Action Wednesday in San Francisco. Campaign officials told the paper that she will take part in more such meetings, including one planned to take place in Los Angeles on Thursday. SNIP Jeff Bechdel, spokesman for the conservative America Rising...

The Vatican’s semiofficial newspaper blasted a series of cartoons of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad as “blasphemous” but also condemned the “mad and bloodthirsty” extremists who opened fire at a Texas exhibit of the cartoons. The front-page article in L’Osservatore Romano likened the exhibit in Garland, Texas, to pouring “gasoline on the fire” of religious sensitivities and was critical of its sponsors, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, and professional provocateur Pamela Geller. Police on Sunday (May 3) shot and killed two gunmen who opened fire outside the exhibit that was designed to provoke Muslim sensitivities; the so-called Islamic State has since claimed...

Pope Francis weighed in on a thorny topic in California history Saturday when he spoke at length at a Rome Mass about Father Junipero Serra, the controversial California mission founder set to become America's first Latino saint later this year. Addressing an audience that included many American priests, including Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez, the pope referred to the 18th century Franciscan priest as “one of the founding fathers of the United States” and praised his willingness to abandon the comforts and privileges of his native Spain to spread the Christian message in the New World. I wonder if...

In response to their own Catholic high school’s participation in a day of silence designed to show support for homosexuality, five nuns walked out of their classrooms last week. These strong women decided to stand with Catholic doctrine in recognition of their faith, beliefs and mission to teach their students the Church’s position on aberrant sexuality. Billed as a “national Day of Silence” the stunt was concocted by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network a New York organization which has been pushing the “Day” scheme since 2000. The stand taken by the nuns comes as an affirmation of the...

In a startling new interview, a 3-star general and former head of Communist Romania’s secret police who defected to the United States in 1978, claims that the Theology of Liberation was the creation of the KGB, who exported it to Latin America as a way of introducing Marxism into the continent. Ion Mihai Pacepa has been called “the Cold War’s most important defector,” and after his defection, the Romanian government under Nicolae Ceausescu placed two death sentences and a $2 million bounty on his head. During the more than ten years that Pacepa worked with the CIA, he made what...

Members of the Supreme Court questioned on Tuesday whether now is the right time to force states to allow same-sex couples to marry, pointing to how quickly public opinion has shifted on the issue of marriage equality. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was a key figure in striking down the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013, suggested that he might be worried about the court moving too quickly to force states to marry same-sex couples. “This definition has been with us for millennia,” Kennedy said of male-female marriages. The justice also said it would be very difficult for the court to...

Honestly, did anyone expect the situation to get this bad in Indiana?Every single day seems to bring worse news.The situation of the Oâ€™Connor family in particular has me sick to my stomach. Local news ABC 57 went looking for a restaurant owner that would go on camera to share their beliefs and found an unsuspecting girl behind the counter of a small-town pizzeria who said she would have no problem serving gay people but that they would not cater a gay wedding if asked.Notice, there wasnâ€™t even an act of discrimination â€” the girl simply answered a hypothetical question.For this...

Several years ago I visited a synagogue in Istanbul, one of the few remaining in all of Turkey. It had been firebombed a few weeks earlier – in response to some recent incident between Israelis and Palestinians. But because of security and a thick outer wall, it was relatively unharmed. Inside, ten elderly, eccentric Jewish Turks were gathered, the bare number needed for a minyan. We spoke for a short while about what it was to live as a religious minority in a big Muslim country. But I will never forget the atmosphere in that tiny congregation – wary, but...

Charlotte Bishop Peter Jugis has cancelled a speaking event by Sister Jennine Gramick that was scheduled to take place at one of the parishes in his diocese.Sister Gramick is the founder of New Ways Ministry, self-described as a â€śgay-positive ministry that advocates for justice for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Catholics, and for reconciliation within the larger Christian and civil communities.â€ťIn announcing Bishop Jugisâ€™ decision to cancel the event as soon as he was made aware of it, diocese spokesman David Hains noted that the Vatican has previously determined that Gramick and New Ways Ministry oppose the Catholic Churchâ€™s...

The Supreme Court on Monday gave new life to a lawsuit challenging ObamaCare’s contraception mandate, striking down a previous ruling in favor of the federal government. An appeals court in Cincinnati will now reconsider the legal challenge from the Catholic groups in Michigan and Tennessee that had sought exemptions from an ObamaCare provision that requires employers to cover birth control for all workers. The justices asked the lower court to reconsider the case in light of last year's landmark ruling on the contraception mandate. That ruling, which was issued last June, decided that the arts-and-crafts retailer, Hobby Lobby, could...

Turkey’s president has lashed out at country leaders who have recognized the killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide on the centenary of the massacres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday accused France, Germany, Russia and Austria—whose leaders or parliaments recently described the killings as genocide—of supporting “claims constructed on Armenian lies.” He accused the United States of siding with Armenia, although President Barack Obama stopped short of using the term in his annual message. …

Prince Charles and his son Harry today joined world leaders to mark the centenary of the catastrophic Gallipoli landings which claimed 140,000 lives during World War One. The royals met descendants of fallen soldiers on the Royal Navy's flagship HMS Bulwark in Turkey's Dardanelles straits, the same crucial waters the Allies hoped to control 100 years ago. Instead tens of thousands lost their lives on both sides in a nine-month battle between the German-backed Ottoman forces and Allies including Australian, British and New Zealand troops trying to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. Today, soldiers from both the...